A Selection from
Smithsonian at the Poles
Contributions to
International Polar Year Science
Igor Krupnik, Michael A. Lang,
and Scott E. Miller
Editors
A Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge
washington, D.c.
2009
This proceedings volume of the Smithsonian at the Poles symposium, sponsored by and convened
at the Smithsonian Institution on 3–4 May 2007, is published as part of the International Polar
Year 2007–2008, which is sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press
P.O. Box 37012
MRC 957
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
www.scholarlypress.si.edu
Text and images in this publication may be protected by copyright and other restrictions or owned by
individuals and entities other than, and in addition to, the Smithsonian Institution. Fair use of
copyrighted material includes the use of protected materials for personal, educational, or
noncommercial purposes. Users must cite author and source of content, must not alter or modify
content, and must comply with all other terms or restrictions that may be applicable.
Cover design: Piper F. Wallis
Cover images: (top left) Wave-sculpted iceberg in Svalbard, Norway (Photo by Laurie M. Penland);
(top right) Smithsonian Scientific Diving Officer Michael A. Lang prepares to exit from ice dive
(Photo by Adam G. Marsh); (main) Kongsfjorden, Svalbard, Norway (Photo by Laurie M. Penland).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smithsonian at the poles : contributions to International Polar Year science / Igor Krupnik,
Michael A. Lang, and Scott E. Miller, editors.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9788460-1-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. International Polar Year, 2007–2008. 2. Polar regions—Research—Congresses.
3. Research—Polar regions—Congresses. 4. Arctic regions—Research—Congresses.
5. Antarctica—Research—Congresses. 6. Polar regions—Environmental
conditions—Congresses. 7. Climatic changes—Detection—Polar regions—Congresses.
I. Krupnik, Igor. II. Lang, Michael A. III. Miller, Scott E.
G587.S65 2009
559.8—dc22
2008042055
ISBN-13: 978-0-9788460-1-5
ISBN-10: 0-9788460-1-X
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48–1992.
00_FM_pg00i-xvi_Poles.indd ii
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From Tent to Trading Post and Back Again:
Smithsonian Anthropology in Nunavut,
Nunavik, Nitassinan, and Nunatsiavut—
The Changing IPY Agenda, 1882–2007
Stephen Loring
ABSTRACT. As part of the First International Polar Year, the Smithsonian Institution
established a meteorological and astronomical observatory at Ft. Chimo (Kuujjuaq) in
Ungava Bay in 1881–1883. Sent to man the post was the Smithsonian’s most prominent
northern naturalist, Lucien Turner. Turner developed a close rapport with Inuit and Innu
families from whom he acquired an extraordinary array of scientific specimens and ethnological materials. While intrepid and inspired, the work of the Smithsonian’s pioneering
Arctic scientists reflects the biases of western scientific tradition. Northern Native peoples
were viewed as part of the arctic ecosystem to be observed, cataloged, and described. For
the most part, the intellectual landscape of Innu and Inuit groups was overlooked and
ignored. The Smithsonian collections are a powerful talisman for evoking knowledge,
appreciation, and pride in Innu and Inuit heritage and serve as one point of departure for
research during the Fourth IPY in 2007–2008. Recognition that northern Natives have
a mandate to participate in and inform northern research is an important change in the
production of northern scientific research.
INTRODUCTION
Stephen Loring, Arctic Studies Center, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box
37012, MRC 112, Washington, DC 20013-7012,
USA ([email protected]). Accepted 9 May 2008.
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This essay considers the changes in the practices of museum anthropology
and archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution between the First IPY in 1882–
1883 and the current IPY of 2007–2008. To know a place is to name it. The
place we call the Arctic means different things to different people. A cultural
construct defined by different eyes and different ways of knowing, it is both real
and intangible. Archaeologist Robert McGhee (2007) calls it “the last imaginary
place.” It is only in the twentieth century that the technologies and the insatiable
appetites of the developed world have been able to overcome environmental and
logistical constraints to establish a permanent presence throughout the north.
There are libraries and research institutes devoted to the complexity and variety
of human experiences at high latitudes. For visitors, the Arctic is as much a cultural construct as it is a physical one, with perceptions repeatedly shaped and
reshaped by time and circumstance.
One has only to consider the transformation of Arctic landscapes from the
fantastic fairy-tale visions—gothic cathedrals of ice—of the early-nineteenthcentury explorers, subsequently morphed by suffering and danger into the grim
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and foreboding visions of the ubiquitous and relentless ice
of the post-Franklin era (Figure 1), to the modern era with
its coffee-table books of stunning photography of polar
bears and vast unpopulated expanses (Loomis, 1977;
1986; Grant, 1998). But the Arctic is also a homeland, and
has been for thousands of years. Arctic inhabitants have
evolved a remarkable and practical adaptation to the climatic and ecological extremes of the northern polar world.
Indigenous knowledge—based on observation and inference and passed from generation to generation—forms an
astute and perhaps surprisingly complex interpretation of
FIGURE 1. The terrible tragedy surrounding the loss of life during
the U.S. North Polar Expedition (1879–1881) following on the debacle of the British Northwest Passage Expedition under Sir John
Franklin (1845–1848) had soured public opinion in the United States
on the benefits of polar exploration and transformed perceptions of
the Arctic as a deadly and foreboding landscape. Editorial cartoon,
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 20 May 1882, William Dall
papers, RU7073, SI Archives. (S. Loring photograph.)
10_Loring_pg115-128_Poles.indd 116
the world inhabited by indigenous northern peoples. Yet
with few exceptions (e.g., Rasmussen, 1929; Rink, 1875),
visiting researchers and scientists have not learned the language of their hosts and thus have been denied much of
the complexity of northern perceptions that has developed
over generations by indigenous peoples.
Historically, science in the north began as a handmaiden of colonial enterprise. Having developed the technology to transport them into (if not always out of) the
polar regions, nineteenth-century explorers, with their
passion for expanding scientific and geographic knowledge, began to collect information about the places they
found themselves in. As was typical on many early and
mid nineteenth-century Arctic voyages, with their winter
quarters established, observatories were placed on the ice
and rounds of tidal measurements, weather, and geophysical observations began. Expedition accounts are filled
with observations on the phenomenology of ice and cold,
as navy explorers and scientists confronted the mysteries
of Arctic life and returned with their collections of natural
history specimens. Also in these accounts, are anecdotal
and ethnohistorical passages that provide some of the first
descriptions of Native residents of the Arctic. In comparison to more complex societies elsewhere, northern bandlevel societies, with their more modest material remains
(the very antithesis of Euro-American values of dominance, competition and wealth) were perceived as being
backward and marginal, literally frozen in time. Lacking
a critical self-awareness the eyes of the European explorers had yet to take the true measure of the Natives of the
eastern arctic who were frequently portrayed as quaint
and childlike, devoid of the quarrelsome and bellicose attitudes of some of their western and southern counterparts
(Figure 2).
Gradually the accumulation of geographical knowledge, dearly bought, began to make sense of the physical mysteries of the arctic. Still little in the way of serious attention to native cultures was afforded prior to the
travels of Charles Francis Hall beginning in 1860 (Hall,
1864; Loomis, 1972). More visionary than scientist, Hall
had been drawn to the arctic by the continuing fascination with the fate of the lost Sir John Franklin Expedition (1845) and the possibility that survivors might yet
be living amongst the Inuit. Severely curtailed by financial
constraints Hall broke from the prevailing tradition of using expedition ships frozen in the ice as base stations from
which to launch sledge and small-boat voyages in favor
of adopting Inuit modes of travel. Hall moved in with his
Nunavut hosts, learned their language, and experienced
their culture as an active participant. He was fortunate
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FIGURE 2. Illustrations accompanying William Edward Parry’s popular accounts of his search for the Northwest Passage (1819–1834) depict
the central Canadian Arctic Inuit as whimsical and childlike catered to a European perception of the polar region as a fantastic otherworldly
place (Parry 1821, 1824). Detail from a Staffordshire ceramic plate, “Arctic Scenery” ca. 1835. (Photograph by S. Loring of plate in author’s
collection.)
in befriending an extraordinary Inuit couple, Ebierbing
(“Joe”) and Tookoolito (“Hannah”) who provided Hall
with an entrée into Inuit society and served as his guides
and guardians on all of Hall’s three arctic expeditions
(Loomis, 1997). Hall’s receptivity to Inuit testimony and
acceptance of the validity of Inuit knowledge about their
history and their homeland both assured his own survival
and the success of his expeditions and presaged (by more
than half a century) the recognition of the validity and
acuity of Inuit oral knowledge by subsequent Arctic scientists and travelers (Woodman, 1991) (Figure 3).
In the eastern Arctic, it is not until nearly 20 years
after Hall that the fledgling discipline of Arctic anthropology emerged as a direct consequence of the first International Polar Year with the arrival of Lucien Turner in
10_Loring_pg115-128_Poles.indd 117
Ungava in 1882–1884 and Franz Boas in Baffin Island
in 1883–1884 (Loring, 2001a; Cole and Muller-Wille,
1984). Neither Boas nor Turner was formally trained in
anthropology. Turner’s first interest and abiding passion
was ornithology while Boas came to the eastern arctic as
a geographer. Boas’ trip to Baffin Island was planned and
partially sponsored by the German Polar Commission,
which was then processing the data gathered from the German IPY station in Cumberland Sound (Barr, 1985). The
resulting ethnographic monographs of both Boas (1885)
and Turner (1894) were subsequently published by the
Smithsonian Institution. These monographs have proved
to be the emerging discipline of anthropology’s intellectual
bedrock for research pertaining to the indigenous peoples
of Baffin Island and northern Quebec-Labrador, and these
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FIGURE 3. Thule ground-slate whaling harpoon endblade found
by Charles Francis Hall’s Inuit companion Ebierbing, also known
as “Esquimaux Joe.” Historically, the role of Inuit guides and
companions in the production of Arctic science was rarely acknowledged.SI-10153, Charles Francis Hall collection, NMNH. (S. Loring
photograph)
works remain as some of the lasting triumphs of the first
IPY accomplishments.
The scientific agendas of the International Polar
Years, in 1882–1883, 1932–1933, and 1957–1958 have
all been concerned with addressing problems of meteorology, atmospheric science, and high-latitude geophysics.
Yet, ironically, arguably the most lasting accomplishments
of the American contribution to the First IPY—from the
Point Barrow and Ungava stations—were the collections
of natural history specimens (e.g., Dunbar, 1983) and ethnographic materials that Smithsonian naturalists acquired
around the fringes of their official duties as weather observers for the U.S. Army Signal Service (Murdoch, 1892;
Turner, 1894; Nelson, 1899). Surprisingly, the volumes of
atmospheric, oceanic, magnetic, and solar observations
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gathered at the dozen IPY 1882–1883 stations did not yield
the anticipated insights into global climatic and geophysical regimes (Wood and Overland, 2006). Perhaps more
significant than the research results in the physical sciences
was the establishment of a model for international scientific practice based on coordination and cooperation, and
the recognition that the study of high latitudes (at both
poles), as with the high seas, was an arena of international
consequence and significance.
In company with the earth sciences and natural history,
anthropology and archaeology were part of the expanding western economic, social, and intellectual hegemony
of the nineteenth century. The construction of scientific
knowledge about the world has, for the most part, proceeded following well-defined western notions of logic
and scientific explanation as the principle explanatory
process for understanding the natural world and the place
of human beings therein. Now, in the twenty-first century,
with much of the world’s cultural and biological diversity
documented in at least a preliminary fashion, anthropology faces the challenge of recognizing, articulating, interpreting, and preserving as broad a spectrum of humanity’s
shared cultural diversity as possible.
At the time of the first IPY, many of the indigenous
peoples of North America had been swept from their traditional homelands. Secure in their northern redoubts of
ice and stone, the Natives of the eastern Arctic had been
spared much of the continental dislocation and genocide
waged against indigenous communities in warmer climes.
The inroads of European explorers, and later missionaries, whalers, and traders, had not significantly impeded
traditional Inuit subsistence practices nor had they intruded far into their spiritual matters and beliefs. Under
the leadership of Spencer Baird, the first curator of the
U.S. National Museum and the Institution’s second secretary (1878–1887), and later, John Wesley Powell (Director
of the B.A.E. 1879–1902), Smithsonian anthropology—in
the guise of the Bureau of American Ethnology—operated
under a paradigm of salvage anthropology in the belief
that Native American peoples were fated to gradually
decline and disappear. Situated in the National Museum
of Natural History (NMNH), Smithsonian anthropology
had a decidedly materialist, collections-based orientation
that was strongly influenced by biological sciences and
Darwin’s evolutionary doctrines. Northern native cultures
were seen as being somewhat uniquely divorced from history due to their remote geography, and many theorists of
the day considered them to be a cultural relic of Ice Age
Paleolithic peoples, at the extremity of the scale in terms
of human cultural variation.
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FROM TENT TO TRADING POST AND BACK AGAIN
The Smithsonian Institution’s previous interests in
the eastern arctic—beginning with biological studies in
Hudson’s Bay in the early 1860s, and support for the U.S.
Eclipse Expedition to northern Labrador in 1860, as well
as its close relationship with the Hudson’s Bay Company
(Lindsay 1993)—provided a basis for a concerted study in
the Ungava region. As part of the First International Polar
Year 1882–1883, the Smithsonian Institution partnered
with the U.S. Signal Corps to establish meteorological and
astronomical observatories at Point Barrow, Alaska, at
Ft. Conger on Ellesmere Island, and at the Hudson’s Bay
Company Post at Fort Chimo (Kuujjuaq) in Ungava Bay
(Barr, 1985). Sent to man the post at Kuujjuaq was one of
the Smithsonian’s most experienced northern naturalists,
Lucien Turner, who had previously conducted important
studies for the Smithsonian in the Aleutian Islands and
Western Alaska (Turner, n.d.; 1886; Loring, 2001a).
Lucien Turner (1848–1909) was at the center of a
small and talented band of young naturalists that were
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recruited by the Smithsonian’s second secretary, Spencer
Baird. An accomplished ornithologist, linguist, and taxidermist Turner reveled in the opportunities for research
and collecting in the North American arctic. Baird arranged for Turner to be posted at the Hudson’s Bay Company post at the mouth of the Koksoak River in Ungava
Bay as a member of an IPY-sponsored meteorological observatory for the U.S. Signal Corps.
Turner’s arrival at Fort Chimo in 1882 was something
of a surprise for the chief factor there, as news from the
outside world only arrived once a year with the annual
supply ship. Not easily rebuffed, Turner quickly established his observatory and took up the responsibilities of
his post (Figure 4), both those pertaining to his IPY agenda
and those dictated by his Smithsonian mandate. Although
constrained by the demanding regime of his observation
and recording obligations, Turner was able to develop a
close rapport with Inuit and Innu families visiting the post,
from whom he acquired an extraordinary array of scientific
FIGURE 4. Lucien Turner at his observatory at the Hudson’s Bay Company Post at Fort Chimo (near present day Kuujjuak), 1881. (SI-6968)
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specimens and ethnological materials (Turner, 1888, 1894;
Loring 2001a) (see Figure 5).
Unfortunately, no traces of a personal diary or letters survive from Turner’s time at Fort Chimo. Diligent
archival research, at the Smithsonian and Hudson’s Bay
Company archives, provide a few tantalizing clues to his
rapport with the northern Natives he came into contact
with (Loring, 2001a). However, for the most part these
contacts are only dimly referred to as the source for
knowledge about the local environment, animals (including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates), social relations, and mythology. The contemporary “intellectual
landscape” of Innu and Inuit groups—the complex web of
oral histories and observational knowledge pertaining to
animals, weather, and the land—was largely overlooked
and ignored by the IPY-era anthropologists, as their focus,
stemming from the natural history approach of their missions, was to categorize and describe the material culture
of the people they encountered. Despite being confined by
the intellectual framework of the day, Turner’s Ungava
collections (as well as the collections made by Murdoch
and Ray at Point Barrow in 1881–1883) have become a
powerful instrument for evoking knowledge, appreciation,
and pride in Innu and Inuit heritage. They serve as a point
FIGURE 5. Innu women and children visiting Lucien Turner at Fort Chimo, 1881. Photography was deemed an essential component of the
work of the Smithsonian naturalists. As some of the earliest extent photographic images of northern Natives, they remain a prominent legacy
of the first IPY. (SI-6977)
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of departure for research during this IPY in 2007–2008, as
explained below. Within the confines of their training and
natural history proclivities, the Smithsonian’s Arctic naturalists had a demonstrated sensitivity to some aspects of
native knowledge pertaining to the cultural and biological
collections they acquired, though for the most part these
are brief and anecdotal notations. Today, these notes, but
more significantly the objects themselves, are being reexamined and reinterpreted by descendants from the communities from which the objects had come more than a
century before.
THE SHIFT IN INTELLECTUAL PARADIGM
The recognition that arctic people have an intellectual, moral, and sociopolitical mandate to participate in
and inform northern research marked a fundamental and
dramatic shift in the practice of scientific research in the
north. It did not arrive until the 1970s and more firmly,
until the 1990s (Berger, 1977; Berkes, 1999; Nadasdy,
1999; Stevenson, 1996; Nicholas and Andrews, 1997) (see
Figure 6).
With the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990 (NAGPRA) and the
National Museum of the American Indian Act (in 1996),
the intellectual landscape as it pertains to the use and study
of the Native American collections has been transformed
into a museum anthropology that is more inclusive, more
diverse, and contingent on Native participation and expertise (Crowell et al., 2001; Fienup-Riordan, 1996, 2005a,
2005b, 2007; Loring 1996, 2001b; Swidler et al., 1997;
Thomas, 2000; Watkins, 2003; 2005; Zimmerman et al.,
2003). It is in this context of cooperation and respect that
the agendas of Smithsonian anthropology and IPY converge as specific information about objects in the museum
collection are not only interpreted by knowledgeable elders and descendant community representatives but also
serve as a touchstone or gateway to discussions about traditional ecological and environmental knowledge. It thus
seems appropriate, given the degree that human agency is
implicated in climatic change, that anthropology for the
first time has been formally recognized as a goal of IPY
polar science, under its new mandate:
to investigate the cultural, historical, and social processes
that shape the resilience and sustainability of circumpolar human
societies, and to identify their unique contributions to global cultural diversity and citizenship. (ICSU/WHO 2007:13)
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FIGURE 6. “We were real red-men in those days!” says Uneam Katshinak, a much revered Innu hunter, as he reminisces about being
covered in blood while spearing caribou from a canoe as a boy. The
continuity of traditional subsistence practices has anchored northern
Native perceptions of their identity and their homeland belying the
“vanishing Indian” paradigm of nineteenth-century anthropology.
(S. Loring photograph at the Tshikapisk-sponsored rendezvous at
Kamestastin, Nitassinan, September 2000)
SEEING AND BELIEVING:
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
IN MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY
At the Smithsonian Institution, the climate and philosophy of repatriation (Loring, 2001b; 2008), coupled
with the moral and inspirational presence of the new National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), has encouraged the emergence of new practices and scholarship.
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The new paradigm is evidenced by the significant numbers and variety of northern Native American and Inuit
scholars, academics, artisans, and visitors who come to
acknowledge, study, and appreciate the collections that
were derived from their ancestors a century or more ago
(Figure 7). The Smithsonian’s anthropology collections
acquired during the First International Polar Year in
Alaska and Nunavik had languished for almost a century, awaiting an appreciation of their significance—first
as objects of art with The Far North exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art (Collins et al., 1973) and then as
symbols of cultural glory and scholarly wonder in a pair
of precedent-setting exhibitions, Inua: Spirit World of
the Bering Sea Eskimo in 1982 and Crossroads of Continents in 1988 (Fitzhugh and Kaplan, 1982; Fitzhugh and
Crowell, 1988). In opening the Smithsonian’s “attic” and
in returning to northern Natives an awareness of their
material culture patrimony, the role of the museum has
been radically transformed. Today, the Smithsonian collections at the NMNH and the NMAI form the largest
holding of material culture pertaining to the heritage and
history of North America’s indigenous peoples. With the
passage of time and the miracle of conservation, these
objects have undergone an extraordinary transformation
from natural history specimens and anthropological curiosities to become the foundation stones for contemporary
community identity and heritage (Figure 8). The challenge
of the next century is to accommodate this transformation and incorporate new perspectives and knowledge.
The future of anthropology in the museum will encourage—and necessitate—new ways of thinking about
the past that would require museum anthropologists and
archaeologists surrender—or negotiate—their prerogative
to interpret the past. Even more important, it is incumbent
upon museum professionals to learn new ways of listening,
new ways of recognizing the legitimacy of other voices,
and other ways of knowing and accepting oral tradition as
a valid interpretive tool (Tonkin, 1992). This sea change in
museum anthropology and archaeology is inherent in the
programs and initiatives that Smithsonian anthropology
is conducting during the time of IPY 2007–2008. A joint
NMNH–NMAI exhibition project is bringing more than
500 Native Alaskan artifacts collected around the time
of the First IPY to Anchorage, Alaska. The exhibit relies
heavily on curatorial input from teams of Native Alaskan
consultants affirming the legitimacy of their perspective,
knowledge, and link to their legacy and heritage.
AN ENDANGERED
PERSPECTIVE ON THE PAST
With the passing of the Inumariit, the knowledgeable
Inuit who lived in the country in the manner of their ancestors, and the Tsheniu Mantushiu Kantuat, the old Innu
hunters with special powers, so passes one of the last vestiges of the link to the intellectual landscape of huntingforaging peoples. To anthropologists and even many indig-
FIGURE 7. Community-orientated collection consultation and outreach has been a core concept of the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center
since its inception in 1991. Here George Williams, from the village of Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island, Alaska, points out construction details of
a model kayak that had been collected by Henry B. Collins in 1927. Williams was part of a delegation of Nunivak elders and educators who
visited the Smithsonian in March 1996. (S. Loring photograph)
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FIGURE 8. A drawing of the so-called magic doll collected by Lucien Turner in 1881 from Labrador Inuit visiting the Hudson’s Bay
Company Post at Ft. Chimo (Kuujjuak) in Nunavik. Such unique
specimens eloquently attest to the continuity of shamanistic practices
in country-settings beyond the purview of missionaries and traders. Transformed into museum specimens such objects still retain a
tremendous potency to inspire and inform descendant community
members of the people from whom they had been acquired. (Fig. 22
in Turner 1894, Smithsonian catalog number ET982, NMNH)
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tellers and tribal elders and often leaving camps where only
children and dogs survived. Soon, much of what remains
of this specialized knowledge will only reside in libraries,
museum collections, and in the clues that archaeologists
might deduce. However, there is yet a great potential for
the practice of archaeology in the north to be informed by
the knowledge and perceptions of elders, the last people to
be born in snow houses and tents and to have spent much
of their lives as subsistence hunters and seamstresses. The
sense of urgency is palpable, as the stock of elders’ knowledge and perceptions is not renewable and will not be with
us much longer. Subsistence strategies are being replaced by
the market economy; communal social relations predicated
on reciprocity and kinship are subordinated by government
mandates and initiatives. The problem can be framed in
a global perspective of diminishing ecological, biological,
and cultural diversity. All of which begs the question: How
important are “old ways” and “traditional subsistence
practices” in the modern world?
In Labrador, as elsewhere in the north, today’s Innu
and Inuit youth are village-dwellers. Born in hospitals and
brought up in isolated rural towns, northern young people
have few opportunities to acquire country experiences
and knowledge. There is a huge discrepancy between the
past as experienced by their grandparents and the present.
However well-meaning Canadian government policies may
have been in advancing schooling, health care, and old-age
pensions, the results have often been disastrous (Samson,
2003; Shkilnyk, 1985). Suicide rates in Labrador Innu
communities are the highest recorded in the world and
substance abuse is rampant (Samson et al., 1999). Fueled
by chronic unemployment and inappropriate educational
development, the impoverishment of village life—devoid
of country values and skills with its concomitant package of social, health and economic woes—is striking in
comparison to ethnohistorical accounts which invariably
describe the Innu as arrogant, self-sufficient, “tiresomely”
independent, and proud (Cabot, 1920; Cooke, 1979).
KNOWLEDGE REPATRIATION
AND ARCHAEOLOGY
enous people themselves, it becomes increasingly difficult
to grasp the richness and complexity of the hunters’ worlds
as discerned through artifacts and museum exhibits. The
insights and wisdom derived from centuries of intimate
knowledge and experience on the land now exists as a
much impoverished and fragmentary corpus. In Labrador,
the 1918 influenza pandemic devastated Inuit communities
and savaged Innu camps, killing off a generation of story-
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In this situation, Smithsonian cultural research in
the north becomes a component in the communities’ response to the current heritage crisis and social dissolution.
For the past decade, in close collaboration with Native
elected officials, community leaders, and teachers, the Arctic Studies Center has pioneered community archaeology
programs in Labrador with Inuit and Innu communities
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(Loring, 1998; Loring and Rosenmeier, 2005). These programs have sought to develop archaeological field-schools
that would provide Native youth with opportunities to experience life in the country, acquire new job skills, and foster self-esteem and pride in oneself and one’s heritage. This
type of enterprise, generally called “community archaeology,” especially as it is practiced in the north, is rooted
in applied socially conscious advocacy anthropology. In
addition to addressing the special scholarly questions that
archaeologists commonly pose, community archaeology
seeks additional goals that strive to empower and engage
communities in the recognition and construction of their
own heritage. In the north in general, and in Labrador
specifically, community archaeology initiatives celebrate
traditional values and share a research focus and practice
that is responsible for creating and returning knowledge
to communities (Lyons, 2007; Nicholas, 2006; Nicholas
and Andrews, 1997), in a sense coming full circle since the
years of the first IPY.
Perhaps the most important facet of community archaeology as practiced in Labrador is that it is situated
outside the settlements, in the country where the knowledge, wisdom, and experience of elders is relevant and apparent (Figures 9 and 10). Fieldwork based on mutual respect and sharing among families, generations, and visiting
researchers honors and encourages indigenous knowledge
and different ways of knowing. The practice of community archaeology with the Innu in Nitassinan is culturally
FIGURE 9. No longer the exclusive domain of professional researchers, archaeology in the north has become a cooperative initiative between
local community interests and visiting researchers. Here, community activist and former Innu Nation president Daniel Ashini, left, accompanied
by Dominique Pokue, survey the ruined shorelines of former Lake Michikamats during an Innu Nation–sponsored archaeological survey of the
region in 1995. (S. Loring photograph)
10_Loring_pg115-128_Poles.indd 124
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FROM TENT TO TRADING POST AND BACK AGAIN
situated experiential education and has an important subsistence component. An awareness of animals—especially
caribou—trumps the mechanics of fieldwork: Survey is
as much scouting for game as it is searching for the sites
where ancestors lived and hunted. The acquisition of game
is an integral part of the fieldwork as young people prepare their own trap lines, catch fish, and learn from elders
how to prepare food and pay proper respect to animals
(Loring, 2001b; 2008). And in contrast to the practice
of archaeology in the strictly scientific paradigm, the lessons of community archaeology—sharing resources and
interpretations and communal decision making—could
be neatly summed as “don’t be bossy, don’t be greedy.”
Beyond expanding an awareness and appreciation of in-
•
125
digenous knowledge and values, Smithsonian archaeology
today is about being socially responsible, recognizing that
the present is connected to the past, and celebrating indigenous heritage and land tenure.
CONCLUSIONS
Around the campfire or next to the tent stove, the conversation about archaeology with Native participants is
tumbled together with thoughts of the weather, caribou,
and seals; of the places where one went hunting, berry
picking, or fishing; and of the old places where ancestors
and supernatural creatures once lived. New directions
FIGURE 10. Coming full-circle in the production of knowledge about northern people and their history community archaeology returns knowledge to a local setting. Working with local youth, and informed by knowledgeable elders, such initiatives serve to celebrate and respect the
continuity and experiences of Native northern hosts. Here, visiting elders from Makkovik interpret architectural features at the mid-eighteenthcentury Labrador Inuit village site at Adlavik (GgBq-1) in 2002. With them is Lena Onalik (right) from Makkovik, the first professional Inuk
archaeologist from Nunatsiavut. (Central Coast of Labrador Archaeological Project photo)
10_Loring_pg115-128_Poles.indd 125
11/18/08 9:18:40 AM
126
•
S M I T H S O N I A N AT T H E P O L E S / L O R I N G
in the practice of archaeology in the north recognize the
legitimacy of life “in the country.” Because of different
ways of thinking about the past, explaining the past is a
basic operating assumption predicated on respect of the
cultures and traditions of the people on who live (or used
to live) on the land (Lorde, 1981). This collaborative approach of northern anthropological research, predicated
on repatriation, recognition, and respect, suggests that
the future of the past is likely to re-imagine the cultural
and physical landscape of the Arctic in wholly new ways.
With the passing of the last vestiges of humanity’s hunting heritage, future generations will need to derive new
sources for inspiration. Northern Native involvement with
Arctic science might be thought to have begun with the
collaboration and insights provided to early explorers and
collectors, including those affiliated with the First IPY in
1882–1883. The increased awareness of the value and
acuity of native knowledge and perception has radically
transformed the social construction of northern science as
the interests and concerns of researchers and indigenous
residents alike come to share an interest in the ecological
and behavioral consequences of life at high latitudes and a
concern for understanding both the past and the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
William Fitzhugh (Smithsonian Institution), Igor
Krupnik (Smithsonian Institution), and James Fleming
(Colby College) provided helpful comments on an earlier
draft.
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